PublicLaboratory is a fantastic citizen scientist organization with really useful projects like DIY spectrometers (for finding out what’s really in stuff) and aerial mapping for monitoring of oil spills, landfills, etc. They’ve done some fantastic work using the continuous shooting mode of consumer cameras, including converting them to near infrared. The problem is that there is little or no control over the camera and you need to process the images later.

I remember speaking to the OpenLab folk at the New York Maker Faire, really interesting projects!

http://www.facebook.com/krichlin Kenneth Richlin

it’s useless once you get out of wifi range… why not set your iphone to 3G, turn on tethering, and send that up in the air too!

http://gravatar.com/dwingateb Don Blair

Ben — thanks! John — great link — love the “balloon / kite” designs there, very inspirational! Kenneth — good point — range with our wireless R-Pi setup is definitely an issue, and it’s particularly challenging for the use-case we’ve been interested in — receiving live images from a kite, which may be as far as 1000+ feet up. We’ve been talking about constructing a directional WiFi antenna in order to extend the range. Using the cell network would be another good option. Because we’re envisioning flying kites quite high up, over forests and water, we’re less excited about sending a smart phone up, simply because the cost of losing one would be higher than a $35 R-Pi (though the cost of an R-Pi solution does start to add up when adding a battery, a webcam, and a WiFi dongle).

http://www.sofcoast.com John Surmont

Thank you Don! The MAKO Hybrid Air System has been in development for almost five years – it can lift between 2-4lbs payloads to 400+ ft above ground and stay aloft for days. It flies like a balloon until it can’t and then acts like a kite when it must.